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How One Occupy Broadcaster Is Changing News Coverage With Tech

Occupy Wall Street broadcaster Tim Pool's protest coverage, shot entirely on smartphones, has received more attention than most mainstream media. The reporter — who doesn't identify with the term citizen journalist — is now devising ways mobile technology can provide unprecedented news coverage.

Pool rose to fame after his 21-hour live Ustream broadcast of the Nov. 15 raid on Zuccotti Park went viral on Twitter. His stream provided what large camera crews could not — an unfiltered take on the action as it unfolded. His footage was featured on Al Jazeera English, MSNBC and Time.com.

Live broadcasts, Pool points out, are advantageous in situations of media crackdowns, because police reportedly confiscated several computers, wiped memory cards and destroyed equipment. Since the protests began Sep. 17, almost 40 members of the mainstream media have been arrested.

But Pool isn't stopping with his heavily trafficked live broadcast. In the works are new ways of covering protests around the world, such as his "Occucopter," which will be capable of shooting and live-streaming aerial footage of protests. Airspace can sometimes be closed during police raids, preventing media helicopters from capturing the action or estimating crowd size — not that Pool has access to a helicopter. The Occucopters will fly below 400 feet in the air, where FAA airspace begins, and therefore cannot be banned. (Check out the video above to learn more about them.)

In addition to providing aerial footage, Pool's working on an Occumentary, aggregating the best clips from the dozen Occupy protests he's attended across the country. He also has plans of creating a Ustream superchannel, which will map out different live broadcasts of protests occurring simultaneously.

Pool spoke with Mashable about how he's innovating with technology to provide incomparable angles of the Occupy movement.

Q&A With Tim Pool

How did you get started with your Ustream broadcast of Occupy Wall Street action?

At the protests, whenever police action would happen everyone would take out their phones and everyone would start filming. It's important to do the broadcast live because there have been reports of police confiscations of media equipment. Some of the computers or phones that were returned had their memory cards removed, or destroyed or wiped. Computers were actually smashed. If I’m live, the footage is instantly uploaded to the Internet where it’s archived and they can’t do anything about it.

Where did the idea for your Occumentary originate?

Occumentary is really me trying to get around the country — and hopefully around the world — to showcase the other Occupy protests and be on the ground to report there. I wanted to have a stream from several different places and then compile them, and be able to say I was in all these places doing a live broadcast. I'm trying to get as much footage as I can and then essentially break it down into a compilation of the best moments from when I started streaming till whenever I put out the compilation.

“When the Polish protesters put up the robo-copter video my friend said I think we need to do this for Occupy."

Do you plan to continue shooting for Occumentary with only a smartphone? Do you think there are advantages to using a mobile device rather than a heftier camera?

A cell phone is actually better for what I’m doing than a video camera. It’s funny — there was a gentleman from Channel 5 down in Long Beach and he looked at me, and he said, "Are you live right now?" And I said, "Yup." And he goes "Man, I’m jealous." He has a big camera there and he couldn’t go live. The fact that all these news agencies picked up my live feed shows that it was better than everything they had. Obviously, they didn’t want cameras at the raid Nov. 15. The way I see it, when you live in a country that claims to be ruled by the people for the people, yet you refuse to let the people know what’s happening, it’s a crime. I don’t really take a hard stance on the politics, but one thing I know for sure is that if there’s a women on the ground being beaten I know which side I’m on.

How do your two drones play into your broadcasts?

A friend and I originally intended to have an aircraft with a down facing camera for use in entertainment, where you’re at a concert and it will fly over head, you look up and give it a peace sign and that will stream to the megatron. When the Polish protesters put up the robo-copter video my friend said I think we need to do this for Occupy. I want to have it stream live, unlike in Poland, where it landed and then they uploaded the video. This is going to provide what the mainstream media already has: they have helicopters that provide aerial shots for crowd estimates. It also provides a clever loophole. At the raid on Zuccotti Park, the police closed air space and did not let the press fly overhead. [Despite rumors, Zuccotti Park's airspace was never closed.] They can’t restrict quadrocopter access because it can be flown in from two blocks away. Between zero and 400 feet is not FAA air space and can’t be closed. Not only they wouldn’t know who’s controlling the drone, it wouldn’t be breaking any laws.

What are your plans for the two drones?

We’re going to install a 3G network controller, so it can be controlled anywhere in the world with 3G. It will also allow for cleaner video to broadcast when we install a 4G network controller. The wackiest idea we have is using an EEG controller, which reads brainwaves. They have a toy on the market right now, where kids put on a headband and a ball will float up and down and more left and right, so you have to train yourself to move the ball and your brain will eventually figure out what makes it work. With the drone, we can start with up and down. I can put on the headband and control the drone with my brain.

What’s in the works for your Ustream superchannel aggregater?

What that’s going to do is give people a way to find other live broadcasts. You’re going to be able to look at a map and decide which angle you want to see. The main launch page will be run by us with the most pertinent feed. It will be a very heated angle, but then you might decide you want to see a different angle or a different city and you can go to the Google map to explore around. People doing live Ustreams will press the geolocator button and it will go onto the Google map.

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